That looks GREAT. I've always held a great deal of hope for this series and it always surprised me when people seemed to be so sure it would be shit, when the two series of Life on Mars strongly suggested otherwise. Fantastic surprise to see it's starting THIS WEEK, too!

Indeed.

I still can't get over how great the trailer is, too. The bit where Vienna really kicks in 15 seconds in sends shivers down my spine.

Fun (loved the Rainbow stuff), but - not a patch on Life On Mars - that first episode, anyway. I was absolutely blown away by the first episode of Life On Mars, but sadly that wasn't the case here.

I absolutely loved it. There was a certain amount of jokey self-parody (Gene and co racing around in the speedboat and stuff) but it was fun with it. It feels quite different from LOM in many ways, despite building on so many of its foundations.

The scary clown is marvellous; I particularly liked the scene in the warehouse where he was simply part of the background.

Fake, tacky, characterless.

All tokens of the 80s it managed to mirror in the program itself. It's not Life on Mars, it's not as good as Life on Mars. Yet it was still enjoyable and has potential to develop. Keeley Hawes was fantastic in what must be an incredibly difficult role.

The Hunt/Drake relationship has definite tinges of Moonlighting and the rest of it seemed to borrow from anything from The A-Team to Dempsey and Makepeace.

The only potential 'jump the shark' moment for me was the liberal use of machine guns that never seemed to bloody hit anyone, although I presume this was a tongue-in-cheek reference to 80s action/cop shows.

"It's not Life on Mars, it's not as good as Life on Mars. Yet it was still enjoyable and has potential to develop."

I agree, and I think this is where it could run into problems. A lot of people are essentially expecting a continuation of LOM and yet the first episode seemed to be trying to say "sorry, but this is going to be different". Part of that, I think, is down to the huge cultural and political shift that happened between 1973 and 1981. What a lot of people admired about LOM was how grim the Manchester of 1973 felt and what a contrast this was from the 2006 Sam had left. Here we have a completely different character to Sam thrown back to 1981 London which feels more glitzy and tacky than 2008. LOM also sent-up 70s cop shows like "The Sweeny" whereas ATA seems to be taking its cue from glossy 80s stuff like "Miami Vice". I can't help but wonder whether the shift in feel will alienate some LOM fans. There's also the problem of no John Simm.

> the first episode seemed to be trying to say "sorry, but this is going to be different".

I took exactly the opposite from it, weirdly - I felt it was saying "Sorry, but it kinda has to be more of the same."

(Illustrated by the first ten minutes, where they knew we were waiting for the lead to be knocked into a coma - so pulled the old Casualty 'What happens next?' double-bluff trick.)

> What a lot of people admired about LOM was how grim the Manchester of 1973

Again, I took quite the opposite away from the whole thing! 70s Manchester feeling liberated and open.

The appeal wasn't the grim look (which was well-realised, but also deliberately stylised), but - as you say - the contrast. And I've no problem seeing a decadent '81 in contrast to today's Britain.

Karl's right about the Moonlighting thing, there's real appeal there. As for the guns - between 'parody' and 'it's all a dream anyway', I'm not too fussed.

>I took exactly the opposite from it, weirdly - I felt it was saying "Sorry, but it kinda has to be more of the same."

>(Illustrated by the first ten minutes, where they knew we were waiting for the lead to be knocked into a coma - so pulled the old Casualty 'What happens next?' double-bluff trick.)

The set-up was the same, yes, but the show felt different for me - slightly more tongue-in-cheek, more glamourous thanks to the move from Manchester to London and 1973 to 1981; Gene and co riding around in a speedboat with submachine guns would have seemed silly in LOM but in ATA it just felt natural.

The new lead is different too. Alex Drake is more firmly rooted in 2008 than Sam was in 2006 because she has family there and she's "pre-warned" regarding what's going on. The dynamic between her and Gene is clearly going to be different as well since Gene clearly fancies her.

>Again, I took quite the opposite away from the whole thing! 70s Manchester feeling liberated and open.

We'll have to agree to disagree. The impression I got of 1973 Manchester in LOM was that it was grim, depressing and in economic and moral decay. That's kind-of why it needed Sam Tyler.

I don't deny differences. But the things you mention are, I'd say, generally 'small' compared to the similarities. They're like how one Bond differs from another - it can be massive in a fan's eyes, but to Joe Ticket Buyer, they're all much the same kinda movie.

> That's kind-of why it needed Sam Tyler.

Surely the point of the show was that SAM needed the SEVENTIES? The clash was the drama, and the show saw the benefits of both approaches - but, in the end, the era was already long past. Time already changed it. Already turned it into Sam's world.

So the setting couldn't be saved, only endured. But Sam, in a way, was. Liberated from the constraints and tedium of modern policing (shown, most literally, in the last ep), given a chance to catch villains without so many constraints. The show, after all, couldn't make 'due process' cool - when it should be - but loved to glorify 'armed bastards smashing up a ponce'.

But hey, it's the varied readings people found rewarding, right? :-)